14.6 ECONOMICS 14.6. 1 SPS CONTRIBUTION TO THE ELECTRIC POWER MARKET The installed peak electrical capacity of the United States is approaching 500 GW. Although the rate of growth has slowed recently from the lagging effects of the recent recession, it is generally forecasted that the demand for electrical power will increase sharply throughout the remainder of this century and probably beyond. For the purposes of this portion of the study, an SPS power capacity, initial operating capability, and buildup rate were assumed in order to investigate the potential market capture of an SPS program. The capacity chosen was 10 GW per SPS, corresponding to the MSFC baseline concept. Incidentally, 10 GW is as large as power plants go today. A typical large nuclear generating plant is on the order of 3. 5 GW (made up of, possibly, three generating units). However, preliminary discussions with representatives of the industry have uncovered no serious problems with future power plants of this size from the standpoint of integration into the utility grid (down time due to shadow occultation, for example, seems not to be a problem as long as it is precisely predictable, as it would be for SPS). The year of initial operating capability was chosen to be 1995, which seems consistent with an aggressive and orderly technology development program. A buildup rate was hypothesized that sought to maximize the market capture while not overstepping the bounds of reasonableness from technical, logistical, and capital availability standpoints. (This last subject, capital availability, is discussed in more detail later.) It was assumed that between 1995 and 2025, sixty 10 GW stations would be brought on-line at the rate of one per year for the first 10 years, two per year for the second 10 years, and three per year for the third 10 years. The installed SPS capacity resulting from such a program is graphed in Figure 14-7. Shown also is a forecast of total United States installed capacity requirements over the same period. It can be seen that by the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, the SPS program could be providing 20 percent of our total electrical capacity needs. Considering the fact that we satisfy an increasing part of our total energy needs with electricity and also the fact that SPS would operate as a base load system and would thus provide more than 20 percent of the total electrical energy generated, SPS could make a significant contribution to the projected electrical energy demands.
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